Runaway weddings

Once there'd be a marriage, then a honeymoon. Now, writes Valerie Lawson, the happy couple head off before the ceremony - and take mother, mother-in-law and the rest of the family and friends with them.

Going to the chapel and gonna get married? Only if the "chapel" is on an island, a resort, a clifftop or a boat. Today the altar is likely to be an archway of frangipanis, the celebrant a Fijian minister, the bridal path scattered with rose petals, the wedding guests in bare feet, the women adorned with hibiscus flowers.

This is the age of the runaway wedding, where the bride and groom star in their own fairyland setting, paying their own way, setting the scene, controlling the script, and ditching religious ritual for candle-lighting ceremonies and beach vows taken beside decorated wishing wells.

The bride makes her entrance by seaplane or flower-strewn boat. Family and friends form the audience who have flown in from around the world, intent on making the fantasy a week-long party.

It's about control, about narcissism. The runaway wedding is also practical, even cynical in its intent. The couple saves money as guests usually pay their own way. And the couple can offload that boring guest list littered with third cousins they have not seen for a decade. The destination wedding, as it's called, is booming at a time when the marriage rate has slumped to a 100-year low.

When the marriage rate is so low "we attach increased significance to each wedding", says social researcher Hugh Mackay.

"We want to maximise its impact as an event." The runaway wedding is also about "taking control in a time when we're gripped by insecurities and so much of our life seems to be beyond our control". As well, he believes the destination wedding uses the ritual of the journey, the magic of the romantic setting and the otherness of an exotic location to make up for the lost religious mysteries and rituals.

Few of the runaway brides want religious weddings, but many include some token to faith. Last September, flight attendant Anna Galanos ran away to Byron Bay with her fiance, hairdresser Joseph Cappadona, with 80 friends, including Anna's bridesmaid who flew in from London.

"I come from a Greek orthodox background," said Anna, "but I wasn't getting married in church. On the internet, I found a big house to rent opposite Rae's at Wategos."

Thirteen guests stayed in the house and the rest paid their way at guest houses and hotels in Byron. "It was huge and beautiful and a bit manic," said Anna. "It was like a four-day party. Joseph had his bucks' night on the Friday, and after the wedding on the Sunday we had a beach barbecue on Monday."

A celebrant married the couple under a garden structure draped with white muslin and delphiniums, the idea of local wedding planner, Clare Robinson-Gale, of Divinity Weddings. Robinson-Gale is one of the new breed of marketers who promise to make the fantasy a reality, promoting their wares on such internet sites as i-do.com.au. and weddingcentral.com.au.

As well, most resorts, from Mauritius to Dunk Island, have their own wedding planners on tap, or what one Sydney groom called their "own personal Franc," a reference to the droll wedding co-ordinator in Father of the Bride.

The "Francs" have usurped the role of priests and parents, allowing free reign for fantasy - at a price. Vanuatuweddings.com promises: "Remember, anything is possible, if you tell me what you would like." Broome Weddings advertises: "Whatever you imagine, we can make it happen."

Robinson-Gale, who established her Byron Bay business two years ago, has stage managed 40 weddings, with only two brides coming from the local area.

"This spring, I had a lot of brides from Sydney and the families all came, too. Two weekends ago I did a big wedding with 65 guests who all came from Melbourne and the same weekend, there were 98 from Sydney.

"I find the venue, organise caterers, marquee hire, celebrants, official documentation for a beach wedding, hair and make-up. I am their man on the ground."

The runaway wedding, she says, is "a growing trend, because women are more empowered, getting married later, and they are able to make a choice about where they are getting married. They often contribute to cost as well. They are doing what they want to do. Often they say they don't want a stuffy wedding."

The phenomenon of the destination wedding, often called the "away wedding" in the US, is blurring the line between the traditional sequence of romantic events, wedding followed by honeymoon.

Carol Sae-Yang, deputy editor of Bride to Be, believes "people don't want to spend a lot of money on a wedding as well as a honeymoon. They begin their honeymoon with family and friends, and their guests then leave, or the couple goes on to another place."

After their Bryon Bay wedding, Anna and Joseph spent four days in the Northern Territory, but in any case, said Anna, "we had already the main honeymoon before the wedding, in Myanmar".

Couples who marry today travel more frequently and with more confidence than their parents. Overseas holidays together are common, so the dream honeymoon concept no longer holds such appeal.

Cinderella Dreams, a new book by American academics, Cele Otnes and Elizabeth Beck, attributes the separation of the wedding and honeymoon to the rise of the destination wedding. "Favoured honeymoon destinations offered either romantic ceremony or spectacular entertainment. If such vacation spots appealed to the couple, they were an equally good place to be married.

"In 1991, Disney World began to offer the destination wedding, a ritual that combined the actual ceremony with a honeymoon on Disney premises. Disney admitted it was responding to inquiries from couples wanting to be married in sight of Cinderella's castle. Whisked away in a glass coach after the ceremony, a little girl's Cinderella fantasy could be complete."

Two years ago, Sydney real estate secretary Tanith Rule, 23, made her own Cinderella setting. After a cruise on the Pacific Sky, she married Stephen at Mele Cascades in Vanuatu, a wedding she describes on i-do.com as "a dream come true".

As she explained to the Herald, "there were huge amazing waterfalls. At the bottom of a rock pool they set up a big arch of beautiful flowers. There were banana leaves on the floor, and frangipani everywhere. We had warriors singing, and drums. I think the celebrant was the governor of Vanuatu. It was very laid back but still religious, but we could have made up our own vows."

A destination wedding can take place without running away too far. Last April, New Woman editor Sue Wheeler married a Commonwealth Bank manager, Nathan Hyde, close to home, at Peat's Bite restaurant on the Hawkesbury. Sue, the star of the three-day wedding celebration, arrived by seaplane which she boarded with her mother from a water taxi. "I loved arriving in the seaplane," she said. "Everyone was standing there waiting. It made it a very special entrance. Civil services are so bland, and you come away thinking 'oh, that's it."'

The restaurant was "a little oasis ... it could have been anywhere, exotic". It was not so much taking control of her wedding weekend, when some guests stayed on houseboats, as making a statement, finding somewhere "to express our personalities. I wanted to make it great for guests coming from the UK and New Zealand, in a spectacular setting, very relaxed."

Sue and Nathan included a candle-lighting ceremony while Sydneysiders, Nyree Epplett and John Higgins, set up a wishing well for their beach wedding at Lennox Head, attended by 60 guests from Sydney.

Nyree, a marketing manager at Basketball Australia and John, a landscape gardener, were married by a celebrant called Zenith. Said Nyree: "Having the wedding up there made it stand out. You can't find that sort of setting in Sydney."

Another good reason for the runaway wedding is the pressure of time on a working couple. "We didn't have that time to dedicate to it, and Clare [the wedding planner] took that headache away."

The website for the Fijian luxury resort Vatulele suggests "career minded couples" find the idea of "eloping" very attractive. Sacha and Drew Kelton took the advice. Last June, the Sydney couple booked the entire resort and paid for all the guests.

Drew, managing director of global business at Telstra, and Sacha, who manages a property portfolio, married on the fifth of their six trips to the resort, then departed on their honeymoon to Italy and Africa.

Sacha wore a dress decorated with handpainted lillies under a frangipani-covered pavilion on the beach. Then came the champagne toasts, a kava ceremony, native feast and ceremonial dances.

Now that is a fantasy. As Mackay says: "The exotic, 'perfect' destination creates the right location for our very own reality TV program called 'Princess for a Day'. Here at last is one thing I can do in my own way, one thing I'm going to get right, one thing I can control."